I’d forgotten how great it feels to mop my melting brow with the hem of my shirt, grit in the creases of elbow and neck, grinning at your buddy when you KNOW you’ve done the job and it turned out well, even if it took a few tries peppered with don’t-tell-Momma expletives and chuckles that started on the floor of your belly. Harold and I had a DAY this week—spreadin’ dirt, buildin’ fence, buyin’ out the Home Depot (who makes AWFUL coffee, by the way, but it’s free and it’s strong, so there ya go), and building brotherhood over bobcat’s roar and the whine and grind of a Ryobi.
My favorite part of the day would have to be riding in Harold’s ’72 Chevy short-bed pickup truck. It had lever door handles and cranker windows, the chrome pulling away just enough to reveal the spongy goldenrod of the foam padding underneath; the seat belts you kept trying to yank from the retractor, but only pulled about eight inches before the THUNK let you know it was an exercise in futility—your life was in the hands of your driver, son, and may the Good Lord go with you; the sliding rear window that may or may not come all the way together if a storm blew up. I couldn’t tell you—we were blessed with sunshine all the live-long day, don’tcha know. That little silver nub-button on what coulda been the glove compartment if there was anything behind the door panel; but it surprised you with a peek into her guts where you expected to find a yellowing, dog-eared owner’s manual or service records dating back to the Reagan administration. How ‘bout the stiff stitches in that sun-dried, crackling river bed of a vinyl interior with the alternating striped panels, guaranTEED to leave you with a severe case of waffle butt, no matter how thick your coveralls? And the SMELL—that mix of vintage diesel and aged Southern summer sweat, the ghost aroma of a foil packet of Red Man or occasional whiff of a Dixie cup stuffed with tobacco-spit-soaked sheet o’ paper towel from Granny’s kitchen, one pilfered while she shook her head and clucked with disapproval. “Nasty,” she’d whisper under her breath. But she’d still kiss her husband, even with a mouthful of the stuff.
I’m four years old standing by PawPaw McCoy in the seat of his old Chevrolet (pronounced SHIH-vuh-LAY) in the carport at their house in Blount County, Alabama, bumper Keds and short britches, Garanimals polo and a smile, arm around his ENORMOUS bull neck, feeling his doorknob elbow in front of my chubby knee—as secure as any punkin’ seat, I assure you. I’m ready to go with him to town to get whatever 50-pound sack o’ something we need from the Co-Op. He’s pushing those pre-set buttons on the radio and orange needle slicks from gospel to country to gospel, his throat rumbling an off-key basso profundo that makes me feel as safe as that tree-sized tricep holding me by his side.
I’m nine years old, and I’ve gotten too tall to stand in the cab, so I’ve graduated to standing in the bed, belly button mashed against the cargo light, arms splayed across the roof of this machine, ROASTING that tender white underskin against the sun-baked steel, river breeze pushing my white-blonde Beatle bangs back from my forehead, cruising through the Swann Covered Bridge, boards creaking and popping as we roll over, pleading for PawPaw to push the button—the horn *I* like to think he had installed just to thrill me, heartily endorsed by both Bo and Luke Duke: “I WISH I WAS I THE LAND OF COTTON!” And a few years later, when that one started to distort and stutter with age and overuse, an even better one took its place. “YAY ALABAMA! CRIMSON TIDE!” My peals of laughter would echo off the walls of that bridge my other PawPaw—James Edward, the Original—helped build.
Now I’m 17, screaming like a scalded dog down this old dirt road, JUST-graduated from high school, Aerosmith BLARING. I take a corner too quickly, the back tires meet gravel, and suddenly I’m slingshot, hurtling toward a neighbor’s grandpa, as he’s push-mowing the lawn. I yank the steering wheel HARD to one side and bounce into the ditch, ricochet up the bank and back into the street, now facing the opposite direction. I jerk the keys from the column and leap from the cab to check on him. All internal combustion has stopped, and only the tick of that GM engine, the long, high tone of a door ajar, the thrum of crickets, and the pounding of our hearts can be heard—
That smell takes me back to summers of hoeing watermelons, remembering the SHEETS of sunburnt skin that molted from my ears and the back of my neck after the water blisters burst; peeling the sweat-soaked cotton from my body after a day of wringing ears of Silver Queen corn from their stalks or chucking overripe okra pods at cousins while they ducked, giggled, and hollered when you tagged ‘em with those projectiles armed with at least two layers of injury: the size and weight of the weapon and the itchy burning of those fine white hairs that covered ‘em and buried into your hands and arms, both as hunter and prey. And bouncing around those grass-green, manure-piled pastures feeding the fattest, sleekest cattle you’ve ever seen, opening and holding gates as that blessed old truck would pull through, the taste of malt in your nose and the shuffle of pellet and cube in a bucket, or that rogue morsel rolling around the corrugated bed.
I let a few drops of nostalgia squeeze outta my eyes as these memories pour over me, like a Sunday morning at the car wash. It’s a song of the South—the rumble of that engine, the creak of the steel as it rubs when the door opens, the clang of a rusty ol’ tailgate left to drop. Hearty as a hymn and as intricate as an aria—but you’ve got to be able to read the notes on the page before you can sing it for your people.
Can you hear it?
Love y’all.